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Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com with another quick tip for families in intensive care.

And before I go into today’s tip, subscribe to my YouTube channel, give it a thumbs up, give it a like, share the video with your friends and families, and click the notification bell.

Now, let’s go into today’s quick tip. We’re working with a client at the moment who has their 57-year-old mom in ICU, after cardiac arrest, and potentially hypoxic brain injury. Now the client calls me this morning and says, “Hey, you need to know what’s happened. I just had a phone call from the ICU doctor saying they have started to test my mom for brain death because they’re thinking she might be brain dead.”

So, this comes completely out of left field. The client had no idea that this was even a point of discussion and they now started with the brain stem reflex testing. And without showing the family the policy around brain death testing, without sitting down with the family saying, “Hey, look, we think your mom might be brain dead. These are the next steps”, no explanations whatsoever. And that’s really disappointing because I know ICUs can do much better.

I’ve worked in ICU for over 20 years and before you do any discussions, even around brain death, you would sit down with the family and explain the process. Do they have questions? Do they have objections? Also, what’s important here is, what are their religious beliefs? Their spiritual beliefs, their cultural beliefs around if someone is brain dead. Maybe in someone’s religion, if someone is considered brain dead in their religion, it doesn’t mean they’re dead. I don’t know, I’m not an expert on it. But what I am saying here is, different people have different beliefs around different situations, and that has come completely gone out of the window here.

The ICU team basically saying, “Well, this is what we’re doing here. We are not asking you. We’re just telling you.” And the ICU team not informing the family again about local brain death policies, how to do the testing, how to inform the family, potentially seeking consent first from the family, there also need to be two independent doctors doing the brain death testing. There’s been no explanation about that. The family only found out from us that this is the actual process.

Now next, what the family also needs to understand is that brain death testing might be the first step towards organ donations. I asked the client, has the ICU team talked about organ donation? And clearly the ICU team has not talked about organ donation. But the reality is that, if someone is considered brain dead, the next discussion that usually takes place is around organ donation. And again, the family is definitely not prepared for that.

That’s why I keep saying over and over again, the biggest challenge for families in intensive care is simply that they don’t know what they don’t know. They don’t know what questions to ask. They don’t know what to look for. They don’t know their rights and they don’t know how to manage doctors and nurses in intensive care.

As a rule of thumb, everything in intensive care or in a hospital, in general, has a policy, everything. Washing the window, cleaning the window, mopping the floor, and cleaning the desk have a policy in the hospital. Do you think that brain death testing won’t have a policy if everything else has a policy? And you need to look at that policy and you need to ask for the policy, whether they’re following the right procedure. Because this is a life-or-death situation, you can’t be not looking at the policy. You need to make sure that they’re following due process. And that they’re not declaring your mom as brain dead just simply at the drop of a hat, literally.

So, that’s my quick tip for today.

If you have a loved one in intensive care, go to intensivecarehotline.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or simply send us an email to [email protected].

Also, have a look at our membership for families in intensive care at intensivecaresupport.org, that’s intensivecaresupport.org.

We also provide medical record reviews for families in intensive care while they have their loved ones in intensive care, or even after intensive care if you want to make sure that your loved one is getting the right care in treatment, that there’s no medical negligence and so forth.

Also, share the video with your friends and families, subscribe to my YouTube channel, give it a like, click the notification bell, comment below what you want to see next and click the subscribe button.

Thanks for watching.

This is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com and I will talk to you in a few days.

Take care.

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